Trump nears a dead end, but repeats victory claim

Washington - Trump has refused to concede and is seeking to invalidate or overturn the results through lawsuits and recounts in a number of states.

Joe Biden on Saturday reached the two-week mark since becoming president-elect, with President Donald Trump stinging from back-to-back setbacks in his desperate, unprecedented bid to undo his election defeat.

Trump has refused to concede and is seeking to invalidate or overturn the results through lawsuits and recounts in a number of states, claiming — without proof — widespread voter fraud.

That effort, which critics call an unparalleled push by a sitting president to subvert the will of voters, has met with little success. Trump’s campaign has suffered a string of legal defeats and appears to have failed to convince key fellow Republicans in states that he lost, such as Michigan, to buy into his unfounded conspiracy theories.

Trump’s bid to cling to power appeared ever more tenuous after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that a manual recount had confirmed Biden as the winner there.

A pair of Michigan Republican leaders delivered another blow when they declared on Friday night after a White House meeting with Trump: “We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan.”

Trump, in his first public comments in days about the election outcome, again asserted “I won” during a White House event on Friday. After a series of court defeats, the Trump team is resting its hopes on getting Republican-controlled legislatures in battleground states won by Biden to set aside the results and declare Trump the winner, according to three people familiar with the plan.

• US Elections 2020